54 TlMEHRI. 
attend to sugar-crushing machinery must be aware of the 
great relief given to the machinery by backing the pinch- 
ing screws T Vth of an inch, with a corresponding falling 
off in the quality of the expression — g-th of an inch 
being quite equal to a falling of, with the same feed, of 5 
per cent. Now with hydraulic pressure you have all this 
give and take, insuring the same rate of crushing when 
an undue feed is by any chance brought to bear on the 
mill, while with the normal feed the mill again closes up 
to its work. 
An erroneous opinion has been advanced that this ap- 
plication of resistance requires less power to drive the 
same mill, as against resistance by a screw. To gain the 
same end the power must be exactly the same; and al- 
though I have not an indication from the Success engine, 
where this new system is now to be seen at work, with a 
small feed passing through the rolls giving 68 per cent, 
crushing, I venture to predict that the power exerted is 
fully 2 h. p. per hhd. per week to gain above result. 
I now come to the question of which I gave notice 
at last meeting, " The Sugar Cane as Fuel." 
The question of fuel to us, who have to pay on an 
average $7 per ton for coals laid down at our works, 
is an important one, and I mean in this paper to lay 
before you the absolute value of an ordinary sugar 
cane as an article of fuel and to trace out the various 
stages at which it pays to use it as such. The cane be- 
fore you is built up of three parts, or more properly, 
from a fuel point of view, two, carbon and water. A 
quantitative analysis of this cane gives : — 
Sugar and solubles 18 
Fibre and ash 12 
Water , 70 — ioq 
